Scott Pilgrim Takes Off: The Complete Limited Series (2023) Universal Blu-ray Review

Table of Contents#

1. Scott Pilgrim Disappears and the Series Gets Interesting
2. Twenty Years of Scott Pilgrim on Every Screen Known to Humanity
3. Science Saru Comes to Toronto
4. The Cast Comes Home
5. The Twist and What It Means
6. Scott Pilgrim Takes Off on Blu-ray: Video Quality
7. Scott Pilgrim Takes Off on Blu-ray: Audio Quality
8. From the Vaults: Supplements
9. Should You Buy Scott Pilgrim Takes Off on Blu-ray?

Scott Pilgrim Takes Off and Then Gets Very Strange {#scott-vanishes}#

The first episode of Scott Pilgrim Takes Off opens exactly the way anyone familiar with the source material would expect. Scott Pilgrim is twenty-three years old, sleeping on his gay roommate Wallace’s couch, playing bass in a band called Sex Bob-Omb that nobody particularly wants to hear, and dating a high schooler named Knives Chow because real romantic commitment remains somewhat outside his skill set. The animation is gorgeous, Science Saru’s style both honoring and reimagining the manga-influenced aesthetic of Bryan Lee O’Malley’s original Oni Press graphic novels, and Michael Cera sounds exactly the way you have always imagined Scott Pilgrim sounds when he is at his most obliviously charming. Then Ramona Flowers arrives. Scott meets the literal girl of his dreams. And then, at the end of the first episode of Scott Pilgrim Takes Off, Scott Pilgrim loses his fight against evil ex Matthew Patel and vanishes.

He is gone for most of the series.

Scott Pilgrim Takes Off: The Complete Limited Series is now on Blu-ray via Universal Pictures Home Entertainment, released March 24, 2026 through Allied Vaughn, and the physical media release is the first time this Netflix original has been available in any format other than streaming. The series premiered on Netflix on November 17, 2023, earned a 96% certified fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and was subsequently cancelled after one season, which is the kind of thing Netflix does to projects that are genuinely original and do not fit neatly into their engagement metrics. The cancellation of Scott Pilgrim Takes Off is a small tragedy. The Blu-ray release of Scott Pilgrim Takes Off is an opportunity to own one of the most formally inventive animated series of recent years in a package that actually rewards collectors.

Scott Pilgrim Takes Off is not the series anyone was expecting when the 2010 film cast reunion was announced. It is not a straight animated retelling of the graphic novels. It is not a continuation of the Edgar Wright film’s specific story. Scott Pilgrim Takes Off is something more interesting and more ambitious: a deliberate deconstruction of its own premise, a series that uses the familiar scaffolding of the Scott Pilgrim universe to tell a story about the people who have always been more interesting than Scott himself. With Scott out of the picture, Ramona Flowers (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) gets to be the protagonist, and it turns out that Ramona Flowers is an excellent protagonist.

Scott Pilgrim Takes Off uses the familiar scaffolding of the universe to tell a story about the people who have always been more interesting than Scott himself, and it turns out Ramona Flowers is an excellent protagonist.

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Twenty Years of Scott Pilgrim on Every Screen Known to Humanity {#franchise-history}#

The Scott Pilgrim franchise is one of the more remarkable sustained creative achievements in contemporary pop culture, and understanding Scott Pilgrim Takes Off requires at least a quick accounting of how the property got here. Bryan Lee O’Malley published the first volume of Scott Pilgrim through Oni Press in 2004, the start of a six-volume run that concluded in 2010. The graphic novels, drawn in O’Malley’s manga-influenced black-and-white style, follow twenty-three-year-old Toronto slacker Scott Pilgrim as he falls for the enigmatic Ramona Flowers and must defeat her seven evil ex-partners in battles that collapse the conventions of video games, indie rock, and romantic comedy into something genuinely sui generis. The series won the Eisner Award, two Harvey Awards, a Doug Wright Award, and a Joe Shuster Award, and generated a cultish following that was fiercely protective of the source material.

Edgar Wright encountered the graphic novels almost immediately after the first volume appeared, during the press tour for Shaun of the Dead in late 2004. Universal connected Wright with producer Marc Platt, and by 2010 the live-action film Scott Pilgrim vs. the World had arrived, co-written by Wright and Michael Bacall, starring Michael Cera as Scott and Mary Elizabeth Winstead as Ramona. The film was a critical success and a theatrical disappointment, opening to modest numbers before finding its true audience on home video, where it became one of the definitive cult releases of its era. The cast assembled for Scott Pilgrim vs. the World read now like a who’s-who of the subsequent decade’s most recognizable faces: Cera, Winstead, Kieran Culkin, Chris Evans, Anna Kendrick, Brie Larson, Aubrey Plaza, Alison Pill, Brandon Routh, Jason Schwartzman.

The franchise went quiet after the film, aside from the beloved Ubisoft beat-em-up video game that was released and then delisted in 2014, brought back by fan demand in 2021. The ten-year reunion events for Scott Pilgrim vs. the World brought the cast back together and reminded everyone involved how much affection they had for each other and for the material. This is the context in which Jared LeBoff reached out to Edgar Wright in 2018, O’Malley came aboard in 2020, and Netflix eventually greenlit Scott Pilgrim Takes Off with the full cast returning for voice work.

O’Malley has said publicly that he had no interest in doing a straight retelling and needed a genuine story reason to return to these characters. What he and co-showrunner BenDavid Grabinski devised is a story that begins as a retelling and then detonates its own premise, which is exactly the kind of move that makes Scott Pilgrim Takes Off worth the revisit even for viewers who caught it during its Netflix run.

Science Saru Turns Toronto Into Anime {#animation}#

The animation of Scott Pilgrim Takes Off is produced by Science Saru, the Japanese studio founded by Masaaki Yuasa and Eunyoung Choi, known for Devilman Crybaby, Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken!, The Heike Story, and Japan Sinks: 2020. Science Saru brings to Scott Pilgrim Takes Off a visual sensibility that is recognizably anime while remaining in conversation with the specific visual language that O’Malley established in the graphic novels. The character designs are more fluid and expressive than the source material’s precise black-and-white artwork, but the spirit of O’Malley’s line work comes through in the exaggerated expressions, the speed lines, and the way the action sequences break with physical reality in exactly the ways the comics always did.

The video game logic that defines the Scott Pilgrim universe transfers particularly well to animation. The fight sequences in Scott Pilgrim Takes Off have an energy and inventiveness that animation can achieve more readily than live action, and the series takes full advantage of the format. Each of the evil ex confrontations uses different visual techniques and tonal registers, and Scott Pilgrim Takes Off is visually restless in the productive sense, never settling into a single stylistic mode when it can surprise you with another one. The Toronto setting is rendered with enough specificity to feel like a genuine place while remaining stylized enough to belong to its own cinematic universe, which is exactly the tonal balancing act that both the comics and the Edgar Wright film managed at their best.

The music of Scott Pilgrim Takes Off comes from Anamanaguchi, the chiptune rock band who previously composed the music for the Scott Pilgrim vs. the World video game. Joseph Trapanese also contributes to the score. The combination gives Scott Pilgrim Takes Off a sonic personality that connects it to the broader franchise while being distinctly its own thing, and the audio presentation of the Blu-ray release ensures that the music lands with the presence it deserves.

The Cast Comes Home {#cast}#

Reassembling the cast of Scott Pilgrim vs. the World for Scott Pilgrim Takes Off was a genuine achievement, and Edgar Wright’s role in making it happen cannot be overstated. Wright has said that casting and working on the original film was among the proudest achievements of his career, and he used that standing and those relationships to bring nearly everyone back for the animated series. Michael Cera returns as Scott, though the series is wise enough not to overuse him given the premise. Mary Elizabeth Winstead anchors Scott Pilgrim Takes Off as Ramona, and the opportunity to lead the series rather than serve as the object of Scott’s quest gives Winstead room to develop a character who was always more interesting than the Scott Pilgrim narrative had previously allowed.

Kieran Culkin’s Wallace Wells is, as in the film, a scene-stealer who operates according to his own entirely self-possessed logic, and Scott Pilgrim Takes Off gives Wallace more to do than the live-action version could accommodate. Aubrey Plaza brings a specific resigned exasperation to Kim Pine that has always been one of the franchise’s best running notes. Chris Evans, Brie Larson, Anna Kendrick, Alison Pill, Brandon Routh, Satya Bhabha, and Jason Schwartzman all return, and the series treats each of the evil exes as three-dimensional characters in a way that the compressed runtime of the film never quite managed.

The decision to include a Japanese audio track on the Blu-ray alongside the English voices is a thoughtful addition. Science Saru is a Japanese studio, the visual language of Scott Pilgrim Takes Off is fluent in anime, and the option to watch it as the Japanese production it partially is gives the release an additional dimension that collectors will appreciate.

The Twist and Why It Earned Every Second {#twist}#

It would be a disservice to new viewers to walk through the specific mechanics of Scott Pilgrim Takes Off’s narrative reversal in detail. What can be said is that the series uses Scott’s disappearance not as a gimmick but as a genuine structural choice that forces every other character to take the story into their own hands. The evil exes, who in the source material function primarily as boss fights, become actual people with actual histories and actual reasons for being the way they are. The community of characters around Ramona, Kim, Wallace, and Knives turns out to be more than an ensemble supporting cast for a hero’s journey. They are, it develops, the more interesting parts of the story all along.

Scott Pilgrim Takes Off is also genuinely meta in ways that go beyond affectionate winking at its own source material. The series is aware that it is an adaptation, aware of the film and the graphic novels, and uses that awareness as story material rather than just a source of easy references. This is what O’Malley meant when he said he needed a genuine reason to return: the story only exists because the characters themselves are grappling with the fact that a story about them already exists. Scott Pilgrim Takes Off is a series about what happens when the people who were supposed to be supporting characters in someone else’s narrative decide to take over.

On rewatch, which the Blu-ray format makes considerably more convenient than streaming, Scott Pilgrim Takes Off improves substantially. The early episodes are seeding threads that pay off in ways that only become fully visible once you know where things are going, and the series’ emotional argument about self-improvement and the costs of treating other people as obstacles in your own personal narrative lands harder when you can see the full architecture from the beginning.

Video Quality: Science Saru’s Colors Hit Different on Disc {#video}#

Universal Pictures Home Entertainment presents all eight episodes of Scott Pilgrim Takes Off in 1080p at the original 1.78:1 aspect ratio, and the transfer is excellent across the board. Animation is a format that can expose Blu-ray compression at its most demanding moments, particularly in scenes with fast lateral movement, rich color fields, and detailed background work. Scott Pilgrim Takes Off has all three in abundance, and the single-disc presentation handles them without visible artifacts or softness. The colors of the Science Saru animation are saturated and specific, the kind of palette that can bloom into chromatic chaos on a poorly mastered disc, and here they are controlled and vibrant throughout.

The fight sequences, which are where the animation earns its budget most visibly, are rendered with the temporal precision that the kinetic editing demands. No smearing, no blocking, no loss of detail in the backgrounds during the most frenetic action. Scott Pilgrim Takes Off is a visually busy series, layering video game UI elements, visual effects, and background gags simultaneously, and the Blu-ray presentation keeps all of it distinct and legible. The character designs, which are simpler and more expressionistic than realistic, resolve with clean edges throughout, and the moments of deliberate visual stylization such as the transitions between tonal registers are handled cleanly.

Netflix’s streaming version of Scott Pilgrim Takes Off is compressed, as streaming always is, and the Blu-ray presentation is a genuine step up in visual fidelity. The difference is most apparent in the quieter, more static shots where compression artifacts on streaming can occasionally give smooth backgrounds a faint digital texture that is absent on disc. Scott Pilgrim Takes Off was made to look exactly this good, and the Blu-ray is the first time it has been presented that way.

Audio Quality: Anamanaguchi Was Born for Lossless {#audio}#

The DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 soundtrack of Scott Pilgrim Takes Off is one of the better audio presentations in recent animated releases on Blu-ray, and Anamanaguchi’s chiptune-inflected score is the primary reason. The band’s music for Scott Pilgrim Takes Off is designed to fill space, to create the sensation of a video game that is also a rock show that is also an indie film, and the lossless 5.1 track allows the full frequency range of their production to come through in a way that streaming compression genuinely cannot match. The low end has presence and clarity. The high end of the chiptune elements has the crystalline quality that digital audio can achieve at its cleanest. The surround channels are used intelligently throughout Scott Pilgrim Takes Off, with sound effects and ambient music extending into the rear speakers in ways that enhance the spatial dimension of the animated Toronto without ever becoming distracting.

The dialogue mix in Scott Pilgrim Takes Off keeps the voice cast clearly positioned in the front soundstage, which is exactly correct for an animated series where distinguishing voices is the primary job of the center channel. The chemistry of the returning cast comes through in the vocal performances, and Michael Cera, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Kieran Culkin, and Aubrey Plaza all bring the same lived-in quality to their voice work that they brought to the original film. Hearing them through a proper home theater system on a lossless track rather than through a television speaker or a laptop is a meaningful upgrade.

The Japanese DTS-HD track is a genuine addition rather than a token inclusion. Science Saru is a Japanese studio, and the Japanese voice cast performs the material with the stylistic sensibility that the animation was produced alongside. Switching between the English and Japanese tracks on rewatch is an interesting exercise in how differently the same story can be inhabited by different performance traditions, and the Blu-ray accommodates the comparison cleanly.

From the Vaults: Supplements {#supplements}#

Scott Pilgrim Takes Off: The Complete Limited Series includes audio commentaries by creators and executive producers Bryan Lee O’Malley and BenDavid Grabinski on all eight episodes, totaling over three hours of supplemental audio, and these commentaries are the reason this Blu-ray is worth owning even if you have watched the series on Netflix. O’Malley and Grabinski are candid, informed, and clearly still processing how much of their creative vision made it to the screen intact. They discuss the decision to sideline Scott in favor of Ramona and the supporting cast, the influence of Science Saru’s house style on choices that were made in the writing room, the logistical challenges of assembling a cast of this size for a voice production, and the specific ways that Scott Pilgrim Takes Off is in conversation with the graphic novels and the film without being beholden to either.

The commentaries for Scott Pilgrim Takes Off are the kind that reward episode-by-episode listening rather than marathon play-all consumption. O’Malley in particular talks about the comics with a frankness about their limitations and his own evolution as a storyteller that is genuinely illuminating, and Grabinski brings a television production perspective that contextualizes the structural choices within the reality of animated series production timelines. Together, the eight commentaries constitute a master class in how to talk about creative work with intelligence and without false modesty.

The inclusion of the Japanese audio track across all eight episodes rounds out a supplements package that is lean but genuinely useful. What the Blu-ray of Scott Pilgrim Takes Off does not have, and what would have been appreciated, is a proper making-of documentary covering the production at Science Saru, the cast reunion recording sessions, and the specific evolution of the premise from O’Malley’s initial reluctance to the finished series. The commentaries cover much of this ground conversationally, but a visual documentary of the kind that the Criterion Collection or boutique labels would have produced would have been a significant addition. Perhaps a future limited edition from a label with deeper supplemental ambitions will address this gap.

Should You Buy Scott Pilgrim Takes Off on Blu-ray? {#verdict}#

The answer is yes, with the specific emphasis that the word “buy” carries in a physical media context. Scott Pilgrim Takes Off: The Complete Limited Series was a Netflix original, it has been cancelled, and Netflix has a documented history of removing content from its platform without notice. The Blu-ray from Universal Pictures Home Entertainment is not just a collector’s item for franchise devotees. It is, practically speaking, the only format in which Scott Pilgrim Takes Off is guaranteed to remain accessible indefinitely. The argument for owning physical media is rarely made more concretely than it is by a cancelled streaming series with no digital purchase option that might disappear on any given content audit.

The quality of the release supports the purchase beyond the preservation argument. All eight episodes in 1080p with a lossless DTS-HD 5.1 audio track represents a genuine upgrade over what Netflix provides, and Anamanaguchi’s score sounds substantially better on a proper home theater setup than through any streaming pathway. The eight episode commentaries are the kind of supplemental content that turns a good disc into a great one, and the Japanese audio track adds a viewing mode that enriches rather than duplicates the English experience.

Scott Pilgrim Takes Off is also, on its own merits, an excellent piece of animated television. It does not require familiarity with the graphic novels or the film to work as a standalone story, though the layers of meaning it has for viewers who know the source material are considerable. As a piece of transmedia storytelling that is self-aware without being smug about it, and as a character study that uses a beloved cult property to ask genuinely interesting questions about whose stories get told and from whose perspective, Scott Pilgrim Takes Off deserves a place in any serious animation collection.

You can pick up Scott Pilgrim Takes Off: The Complete Limited Series on Blu-ray through MovieZyng, where you will also find the full Universal back catalog and thousands of other physical media releases. Scott Pilgrim Takes Off is available now. Get it on disc before the streaming version disappears entirely.